Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Free is web 2.0 flaw
There's a monumental flaw in web 2.0. Reliability. What do you do when free web based applications that you've started to use as part of your daily routine fall over. Because they're free there is no one at the end of a phone to get them fixed.
Customer service web 2.0 style involves heading to a forum and lining-up alongside other users to log your issue. And then go back each day to post increasingly frustrated comments until the issue is fixed. However excited we get about web 2.0 we're certainly not at the stage of firms taking corrective action based on blog postings or comments.
I thought that Google was the exception to the rule until last week. An issue arose with Blogger last week (the Google application I use to publish this blog) whereby users couldn't publish images to their FTP sites. It took Blogger four days to fix.
Has web 2.0 become an excuse for piss poor customer service? Companies don't need to invest in customer service because users don't expect it. But inevitably if applications regularly fall over users will dump them and go elsewhere.
Twitter falls over at least once a day. At the moment the pagination is broken and you can't scan back more than a page over old Tweets. On the rare occasions that it doesn't it becomes a story in the trade press.
Edelman's European CEO David Brain raised this issue a month or so ago.
Alan Patrick at Broadstuff has chewing over the issue of how Web 2.0 businesses are going generate revenue for some time. He predicts that the advertising model has run its course and that there is a bubble ahead.
Customer service web 2.0 style involves heading to a forum and lining-up alongside other users to log your issue. And then go back each day to post increasingly frustrated comments until the issue is fixed. However excited we get about web 2.0 we're certainly not at the stage of firms taking corrective action based on blog postings or comments.
I thought that Google was the exception to the rule until last week. An issue arose with Blogger last week (the Google application I use to publish this blog) whereby users couldn't publish images to their FTP sites. It took Blogger four days to fix.
Has web 2.0 become an excuse for piss poor customer service? Companies don't need to invest in customer service because users don't expect it. But inevitably if applications regularly fall over users will dump them and go elsewhere.
Twitter falls over at least once a day. At the moment the pagination is broken and you can't scan back more than a page over old Tweets. On the rare occasions that it doesn't it becomes a story in the trade press.
Edelman's European CEO David Brain raised this issue a month or so ago.
And as an old colleague commented on Twitter (which like Facebook is definitely not mission critical just addictive/vaguely useful) “that’s what happens when you rely on free services for work: there’s no one to blame!” Free services do not come with the same commitment and there is very little real customer service beyond a blog and FAQs for most of them and let’s face it, they do go down a lot or suffer ‘improvement’ periods frequently.Free is great, but I am beginning to think that I would rather pay for web 2.0 services on a subscription basis and have some form of service level agreement.
Alan Patrick at Broadstuff has chewing over the issue of how Web 2.0 businesses are going generate revenue for some time. He predicts that the advertising model has run its course and that there is a bubble ahead.
Labels: social media
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Comments:
Me to....at least for my aggregator. I wonder if someone will introduce one to the market and if we would really put our money where our mouth is....maybe we need a 2.0 service ombudsmen to do a league table of down times on our favourite apps!
Hey Wadds. Nice post . I know I keep banging on about it but . . . why don't the web 2.0 companies that produce incredibly valuable tools just ask their users if they'll pay for them? I for one would and if my little poll is anything to go by - there's plenty other people that would too. £1 a month to get a reliable, ad-free Twitter for example? Yes please.
What about the idea of getting a brand to 'sponsor' Twitter every month and effectively pay to keep it reliable and ad free. In return every user would receive a single Tweet at the beginning of the month telling them who was paying for their Twitter love.
Oh and the advertising model is definitely broken. We're blatantly on the cusp of a whole new different model and I think it would be better if brands led the way rather than consumers and/or technology showing them it. More thinking needed . . . .
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What about the idea of getting a brand to 'sponsor' Twitter every month and effectively pay to keep it reliable and ad free. In return every user would receive a single Tweet at the beginning of the month telling them who was paying for their Twitter love.
Oh and the advertising model is definitely broken. We're blatantly on the cusp of a whole new different model and I think it would be better if brands led the way rather than consumers and/or technology showing them it. More thinking needed . . . .
